Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are becoming ubiquitous. Particularly in locations such as school and businesses, there may be a number of wireless access points (APs), each operating as a gateway for wireless connectivity to a wired network. In this type of complex networking system, there is a need to provide a redundancy mechanism with a short failover time in order to at least maintain client(s) connectivity.
Currently, conventional wireless systems are adapted to handle failover conditions based on redundancy at the controller. For instance, three primary controller-based redundancy mechanisms include backup-LMS (Local Area Network “LAN” Management Solution), Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), and High Availability (HA)-Lite. For backup-LMS, the AP system profile is configured with a primary and a backup LMS address. APs initially connect to the Primary LMS. When an AP loses connectivity with the primary controller, it fails over to the backup controller. As part of failover, it re-establishes the tunnel with the backup-LMS, downloads the configuration and then becomes operational. In accordance with VRRP, two controllers are configured to form a VRRP pair. The VRRP IP address is configured as the LMS in the AP system profile.
All these mechanisms provide controller-based redundancy. However, it is contemplated that redundancy provided at the edge of the network may enable compliance with more stringent failover requirements.